h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*vogonpoet walks on stage, takes a gratuitous bow, and clears his throat*

Jugglers, Magicians and Entertainers of h2g2, welcome one and all to a fabulous, and indeed most fantastical, new world of trickery. Too long on hootoo have we been constrained by a world of static letters and single blobs. The time now has come for moving pictures to become part of our regular online repertoire.

It maybe sounds crazy, a fools dream, but even as we speak, a select few lucky Edited Guide entries are being AViated (see A13264670 for details). What does this mean? It means Audio-Visual moving pictures such as you might find in a magic lantern, in the cinema, or even on your own TV, are being created to accompany h2g2 entries. Once the clips are complete, they are reviewed by the entire AViator team, and then hopefully approved of by the italics, whereupon they are put up on the official h2g2 Aviators YouTube account, and a link is added to the bottom of the Edited Entry
(see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ68JH4UJJk for an example). No longer must entries by read, for they can also be seen and heard.

*more seriously*

In general, AViation clips to go with edited entries are meant to follow the entry as much as possible. With that in mind:

Surely if any entry ever cried out for a movie clip, or just a simple animation, it is this one? It would need to be based on the entry itself, so my vague Voice Over and Shot ideas, which need your input badly, are as follows:

VO: Juggling can best be described as the art of stylishly throwing many objects into the air and then failing to drop them.
Shot: Someone juggling, but then dropping, making face.

VO: What constitutes actual juggling is debatable
Shot: People playing jolleyball with clubs, or some cross country diablo or something .

VO: In fact, anything that happens when groups of jugglers get together can be claimed to be juggling, especially if it occurs late in the evening in a pub
Shot: Someone doing some dodgy trick in a pub someplace.

VO: Generally though, a fairly safe definition would be the throwing and catching of three or more objects in some form of sequential pattern. These patterns include the cascade..... the shower..... and the fountain......
Shot: someon juggling the patterns obviously, with appropiate text labels layered over the shot.

VO: Jugglers themeselves can be classified into three main distinct types, the numbers juggler, [+ definition]... the technical juggler [+ def.].... and the lazy juggler [+ def.]...
Shot: (I reckon you people get the idea - 3 different jugglers, each doing there own thing)

VO: If all this sounds like fun, and you are looking to start learning to juggle, here are a few tips....

From here, the rest of the clip would detail how to learn to juggle three balls, from starting with one, to vamping with two, and on to the three ball cascade.

The closing scene would then be based around the final paragraph of the entry:

VO: Once you've got the hang of the cascade the world is your oyster. There are lots of three-ball tricks which are variations on the cascade, and you could try to master the shower, where all the balls circulate in front of you. Then move on to fruit, umbrellas, bowling balls and eggs (always fun that) and you'll be juggling fire-clubs while unicycling backwards on a tightrope before you know it. Remember though, to keep the old juggling adage in your mind: don't try this at home. Go round to your neighbour's house and let them clean up the mess.

Shot: maybe an animation of someone juggling the world and some oysters (unless someone has any world map bean bags, which I have seen in shops in the past), then back to real people juggling all sorts of stuff, then the closing shot, someone juggling eggs and dropping one on a kitchen floor (I don't mind doing the last one, our kitchen floor is easy to clean).



Now, for YouTube copyright issue reasons, the entire clip has to be a maximum of 10 min long, although shorter is fine. In an ideal world, the response to this post will be so overwhelming that for every different pattern, shot, scene and trick shown, we could have a different h2g2 researcher juggler - So please, post underneath and volunteer to help Malabarista (who already volunteered yay!) and I in this juggling movie endeavour.

(It would be particularly nice to get some of the original authors on board *waves* - MaW, Cabby, 26199, if you see this, it would be pretty cool to hear from you... failing that, if the response to this post is truly underwhelming, I might just chase you across the internet to your respective blogs and websites)

Even just one more juggler would be nice - I suppose I could just about pretend for about half a second to be a numbers juggler, but it wouldn't be very convincing - just a very half-arsed attempt to flash 7 balls (I can only really juggle 5 ), which would end up looking terrible after 4 throws probably. And maybe a non-juggler who wants to learn.

Everyone can join in - even my not so amazing phone camera can make movie clips, and of course, the editing, the voice overs, and the possible musical backing tracks will all require work as well over the next few months.

I don't expect this convo to move very fast (although hopefully it will move faster than "the bridge conundrum" thread below), nor do I have infinite amounts of spare time for this project, and the entry has survived without AViation for more than 8 years, so there is no massive hurry really, but I would like to get this done sooner rather than later, so:

anyone interested?


vogonpoet - Keeper of Balls in the Air

*taps foot expectantly*